Fourths Of July: SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987)

Special Effects Took A Break In This Fourth Installment

As the SUPERMAN film that ended further releases about “The Last Son from Krypton”, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE has not gotten better with age. We have seen franchises release too many films and dilute the quality of beloved earlier entries many times, but SUPERMAN IV is a rare treat that Geeks of Doom calls “one of the worst comic book movies of all time.” The first three minutes of the movie show a bunch of shoddily edited word art in place of credits that compete with each other for “most unpredictable moving transition.” That this movie retained the majority of its principal cast is a feat for the fourth entry in a franchise and the actors do a great job maintaining their characters’ personas as best as possible for continuity’s sake. And they cannot be blamed for the plot holes and poorly executed F/X as the performers’ charms are what carry the load of the movie’s few memorable moments. 

Outstandingly, this is the entry that brings the relationship between Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) and Superman (Christopher Reeve) back after SUPERMAN III sidelined her in favor of Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole).  Although more present than in the third movie in the franchise, Lois gets another reduced outing compared to the role she had in the first two films. SUPERMAN IV has Superman once again seemingly reveal his secret identity to his paramour Lois Lane. At one point, Lois goes to pick Clark up for a dinner meeting and he nervously fumbles around until he asks her to get some fresh air with him, only for him to jump off his balcony and send Lois reeling. Superman scoops Lois up while still wearing his disguising glasses and after taking them off, she only exclaims “Superman!” before going on a flight with him.

After the events of SUPERMAN II see Lois investigating whether Clark and Superman are the same, the audience realizes that Lois is still affected by the mind-wiping kiss Clark gave her at the end of that second film. Superman tests her by mentioning that she doesn’t know his real name, to which she says “Kal-El” and says that she remembers everything. That is quickly disproven, however, when Superman changes clothes and puts his glasses on, to which she only sees him as Clark Kent. While it’s disappointing that Lois did not notice the obvious, the saddest part is that the kiss has lasting effects on Lois as she never goes further than a small inclination at Superman’s secret persona. Lois Lane in the first couple of movies would’ve had more questions and even later on when she starts to feel the connection between Clark’s illness and Superman being in trouble, she simply fights her own mind about the connections it wants to make.

Due to the continued identity crisis with Lois, the main character finds himself on a double date, albeit with Lois as Superman and as Clark with his new boss’ daughter, Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway).

The silliness of switching back-and-forth between the two personas, while the two women are distracted by increasingly bizarre circumstances is an iteration of a popular sitcom trope called the “two-timer date.”

On the other hand, this is also a loose adaptation of an early Superman comic storyline where Lois Lane was dating Superman while Lana Lang dated Clark Kent, only in SUPERMAN IV, Lana is replaced by Lacy.

This movie had a third of the budget of the first entry in the franchise, but even with a $17 million budget, no amount of cult love or reassessment can soften the blow of how bad the special effects are. If it were the first entry of a franchise, perhaps it could be excused, but at this point in the SUPERMAN franchise, the movies made over $500 million worldwide at the box office and somehow had worse special effects in the final release than most episodes of 1970s Wonder Woman TV series. There were plenty of issues behind-the-scenes leading up to and during the filming of this movie. Alexander Salkind and his son Ilya, producers of the first three SUPERMAN movies, found themselves in a financially-strapped situation and sold the rights of SUPERMAN IV and future sequels to the Cannon Group for $5 million.

It took the Cannon Group a lot to convince Christopher Reeve to come back as Superman, offering him $6 million pay, financing for his pet project Street Smart, and approval over the story and director according to AFI. Due to Cannon having many projects in the works, the budget faced multiple restrictions and Jon Cryer recently revealed that “Cannon ran out of money... and released an unfinished movie…”, which gives a bit more context on not only what went wrong with this entry in the franchise, but why there were no further sequels.

Mentioning the special effects and silliness of the plot throughout this article is fun, but the element that trips me up the most about this movie is that it has too many plots running at the same time and stumbles in each. The Daily Planet has been bought by a media tycoon, David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker), who wants to turn the newspaper into a tabloid; spurred on by an obvious question from a simpleton child, Superman stops the international nuclear arms race by removing all nuclear weapons from Earth; Lois realizes she loves Superman; Lacy wants to date Clark’ and Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) decides to create the perfect nuclear weapon in Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow). An interesting point that I loved about the movie is the conflict between an American who hates the world and an extraterrestrial who goes to great lengths to protect it.

Nuclear Man is created by Lex Luthor, a furious American who feels jilted by the system he thought should allow him his privileges due to his immense wealth and power. He wants Nuclear Man to destroy Superman and Earth as revenge for the world punishing him for his past actions while Superman is a Kryptonian who claims no allegiance to a single country but takes the time in the middle of his battle with Nuclear Man to plant the American flag on the Moon. SUPERMAN IV lightly explores this theme of protecting the purity of humanity from their own greed and corruption and we’d see something similar approached again decades later in BATMAN V SUPERMAN.

Interestingly, it’s important to contextualize the American flag scene since this movie was released while the Cold War was ramping down. The movie sets itself up with a hypocritical note as, on one hand, the denuclearization of the world points toward Superman wanting global peace while him planting the American flag on the Moon gives a nod to the strong sense of nationalism Americans felt during the War.

SUPERMAN IV sets itself up with these types of deeper plot lines with The Daily Planet’s focus now on sensationalizing the “boogeyman” that American tycoon Lex Luthor has created in Nuclear Man to offset the mission for global peace that Superman sets out for. Even as Superman fights this disturbance, the new tabloid jumps at any buzz they can create, even declaring Superman dead to Lois’ dismay. The movie, for all its F/X faults, does a great job of tackling some of the issues it wants to touch on in subversive and meaningful ways, and while the plot lines are sometimes competing and a bit confusing, it deserves a round of applause loud enough to drown out the memories of how its special effects, or lack thereof, end the SUPERMAN franchise until SUPERMAN RETURNS two decades later.

SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE is currently streaming on HBO Max.